Taylor grimaced as she flexed her left arm, barely able to grasp the fork that had come with her meal. A full week in the hospital and her arm wasn’t getting any better, never mind her leg. She had to walk with crutches, and what passed for physical therapy in Brockton General was doing her little good.
Panacea, or rather, Amy, had come by on two other occasions in an official capacity, confirming that she was unlikely to regain full control of her limbs without a healer capable of working on brains. She mentioned a cape by the name of Surgeon, but her wait list was almost a year long. Taylor passed on that option.
She could do it herself, she just needed the right materials. The blueprints and ideas came freely, and it took all her willpower to not just rip into the machinery she found hooked up to her to monitor her health. She knew she could fix her brain, from her mobility to the gaps in her memory, the idea was there just waiting for her to grasp it.
It would be difficult with her disability, and more than likely she would have to tell her father about her powers. Or, she could take the offer that she was getting daily from the ‘visiting Ward’ that totally wasn’t a blatant disregard of her identity that they spent more than half their time at the hospital in her room.
Amy had run Gallant off that second night, prompting a sincere thank you from Taylor that had taken the healer off guard. Amy had taken to spending a few minutes each visit at the hospital stopping by her room, off the books since she was supposed to log each patient visited. It gave Taylor someone to talk to, since that nurse from her first night awake hadn’t returned.
Amy had promised to check into it on her last impromptu visit. Taylor had a sneaking suspicion of why she wasn’t around, but wanted to think better of the heroes than to see a woman fired without a good reason.
Her father had been by each morning before work, and each evening after, which Taylor had appreciated. She knew the rest of his time was being spent fighting with the school over the investigation, and trying to squeeze answers from the PRT. Answers that wouldn’t come unless she joined.
Oh, they never said it outright, but it had become quite clear to her after a few days of back and forth with the various Wards. So far, she had met all of them except for Shadow Stalker and Clockblocker. Vista had come by twice.
Each of them had talked up the virtues of the Wards, a sales pitch in all but name. If Armsmaster hadn’t already soured her to the idea with his veiled threats, she might have considered it. She was a Tinker, having put that much together from the one-sided conversations with the Wards, and her chats with Amy.
The door to her room swung open and Taylor found herself smiling as said healer entered, and promptly dropped the grin when she saw the grim expression on her face. Amy took a few steps over to her usual chair, and dropped into it with a labored sigh.
“Rough day?” Taylor asked after a moment.
“Tina was put on administrative leave following what happened,” Amy said. “They fired her yesterday.”
Taylor sucked in a breath, even though she had expected the answer. Every other nurse she had spoken with had been tight-lipped about what was happening, likely fearing for their own jobs after she was made an example to the rest about what happened when the Protectorate didn’t get their way. It disgusted her to hear those suspicions confirmed, but it also served to strengthen her resolve.
Such an abuse of power wouldn’t go unanswered.
“They’re sending me home tomorrow,” Taylor said instead. “They’ve given up on any treatment working.”
“I’ve also been told that Surgeon won’t be able to see you until next year at the earliest,” Amy added. “Or it could be within a week if the person in question was a Ward.”
“They aren’t even trying to be subtle, are they?”
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” Amy said. “I’d understand if you want to blame me for not fixing you.”
Taylor began to speak, then shut her mouth. It would have been a lie to say that she didn’t blame Amy at least a bit. Panacea was a name well known in Brockton Bay, the miracle healer, and there she was, admitting that she couldn’t do anything to help. Taylor was angry, but it was better to direct that anger to those who deserved it.
She would be getting out of the hospital, then she could start building something that could fix her mind. Once she had her mobility back, that would be when things changed. Taylor had ideas and a vision, a brand-new body, fully cybernetic, with a mental interface that directly connected to the internet. Able to leap over buildings, laugh off bullets, and lift cars.
She could do so much with such tech at her fingertips, the only thing holding her back would be building it. She could forgive Amy for not being able to help, because for once, she could help herself. She just needed to find the right tools and materials.
----------------------------------------
Taylor wanted nothing more than to pull her hair out. Nothing in her house had been suitable for building even the most rudimentary of tools she would need for her eventual workshop. It wasn’t fair. No other classification of cape needed tools or supplies. Why couldn’t she have been gifted flight and lasers, or even something like the ability to command birds. Anything would have been easier to work with than a Tinker power. Worse, she knew what her specialty was and it was even more of an insult.
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
Cybernetics.
She had figured that out once she realized that her power wanted her to remove her own brain and install it into a machine interface. Steel and aluminum just wouldn’t cut it for such endeavors which meant sourcing rarer metals. Even worse, she was what was classified as a Wet Tinker, and those weren’t looked upon kindly. Surgeon fell under the same classification, but her abilities were closely guarded and she admitted to being under heavy restrictions aside.
On the plus side, Taylor’s ability to program had grown by leaps and bounds, to the point that she had replaced the operating system on her old PC. It wasn’t a substitute for proper new hardware, but there was only so much she had to work with.
Loading up her search engine, she was once again frowning at the prices of the metals she would need in bulk. Titanium, tantalum, and various ceramics were all beyond her, and monitored aside. It was only thanks to her custom search engine that she avoided gaining the attention of the various groups that tracked search patterns for new Tinkers.
Oddly enough, PHO ended up being the best source of information. A helpful F.A.Q. was listed for new Tinkers, and Taylor had read it over several times. Of the most concern wasn’t what was said, but what was left unspoken. Sure, the listing of the unspoken rules that capes lived by was nice, but it was clear that nobody respected them when it came to Tinkers based on the advice offered for scavenging.
Taylor had thought to take a bus to the boat graveyard, but it was obvious that the gangs would be watching such an obvious location. Yes, she was including the Protectorate in the grouping after the recruitment tactics they had demonstrated. That left her back at square one for finding a source for parts.
That led her to checking the account that had written the F.A.Q. One would have expected it to be written by Hero, or Dragon, but it was written instead by someone going by the name Dodge. Trying to find information on him was almost impossible, but what she did find was a name.
Toybox.
Who or what they were was a mystery, but she had a lead. It didn’t feel like a coincidence that she had found that much, it felt intentional. So, she decided to do the straightforward thing and sent Dodge a message. He responded less than five minutes later with a single word.
Damascian.
Taylor frowned, because she had no idea what that was supposed to mean. It had to be some sort of code, or a test as part of the mystery. Adding Damascian to her search terms did yield a new result however, a website that was nothing but broken code. Taylor was about to dismiss it when she noticed something about the code.
What she was beginning to recognize as her Tinker sense filled the gaps and in minutes the broken website gave way to a new page. It was a storefront, no different than any other big box store, but the merchandise stood out. A singular device, about the size of a flashlight was spinning on the top banner, listed at twenty-five percent off, and carried a price of two hundred thousand with the discount.
It was a beam saber, an honest to god Tinkertech lightsaber. Taylor almost squealed when she put that much together. It didn’t take long before she was lost in the store, browsing materials and tech alike. Everything she needed was there, but it would be a cold day in hell before she could afford even the cheapest of items.
What elation she had felt all but vanished, she had found what she needed, but it was still beyond her. Despair gripped her heart like a vice, but she wasn’t done yet, as there was a contact form for specialty requests. It might be a mistake to reveal herself like that, but her options were dwindling and she did NOT want to go crawling to the heroes.
Content that she had made herself clear enough to be interesting, but not so much as to give everything away, she sent the message explaining how she had found the site and what she could do. All she asked was for help in getting established. She sat there for five minutes, then ten and it soon became clear she wasn’t getting a rapid response.
A door opened below and Taylor quickly shut off her monitor and got up. She could walk on her own, technically, but it was incredibly dangerous for anything more than short trips between her desk and bed, so she grabbed her crutches and made her way to the stairs. It was hell getting down them with a leg that barely twitched, but she managed.
“Hey Dad,” she said once her feet were on the ground again. “How was work?”
“Same old,” he said. “A group of scabs beat us out on another bid for work downtown.”
Taylor frowned, as that was becoming an increasingly common thing with the Dockworkers. Far too often for it to be a coincidence. She would look into it, if she wasn’t dealing with her own problems. It was then that she noticed the bag of Chinese takeout and felt her stomach rumble. Her father laughed and gestured towards the kitchen.
They ate in silence, not wanting the already soured mood to be dragged even lower. Taylor cracked her fortune cookie and frowned. QUESTION THE GIFT THAT SEEMS TOO GOOD. It wasn’t bad advice, but didn’t seem all too relevant to her own life.
“A dead end only seems as such, it merely means you should seek a different door.”
She looked up at her father’s frowning face and saw pinpricks of unshed tears in his eyes. Taylor knew he was still attempting to get answers out of Winslow, to get the investigation opened properly once more, but it seemed like nobody was willing to play ball. It burned her to know that justice was being held for ransom.
“I’m going to turn in early,” Taylor said.
She would rather lie in bed than see her father so helpless. Knowing that his ineffectiveness wasn’t his fault didn’t stop it from ripping into her heart. She grabbed her crutches and began the slow and often painful ascent of the stairs and made it back into her room. Thankfully this trip didn’t involve a fall. She almost collapsed into bed, but she turned her monitor back on one last time to check and almost stumbled.
She had a reply.
Opening the message, she began to read and for the first time in what felt like years, she smiled. It was a link to another broken site, this one in far greater disarray. Taylor cracked her knuckles and got to work and in less than ten minutes, she was looking at a singular chat box on a black screen.
Hello young Tinker, well done in locating us.